Bungalow Breaks
One of the paintings that hangs within Chapslee shows the house surrounded by wilderness except for one other structure. This must have been soon after it was built in 1830 by an East India Company surgeon. Since then much of the wilderness has been replaced by the mountainside sprawl of Shimla, and the house has changed owners several times. In 1938 it was acquired by Raja Charanjit Singh of Kapurthala as a summer residence. And this is the character it retains as one of India’s earliest heritage hotels.
Inside, it is somewhat dizzying: curtains from the Doge’s Palace in Venice, Murano chandeliers, Baccarat goblets, Limoges cups, Satsuma and Peshwa vases, Indian miniatures, Royal Doulton tiles, French tapestries, mounted heads, weapons from the Kapurthala armoury. A ‘cup of coffee’ materialises as a laden table carried on one shoulder by a uniformed bearer, and a service bell is seldom out of arm’s reach. Visitors can choose from five themed suites (one of them is the room of classical vocalist Naina Devi, who married
into the family, and another the raja’s, with a fireplace in the bathroom).
The current owner, Kanwar Ratanjit Singh, has been perfecting recipes passed down from the royal houses of north India. The Chapslee kitchen leans towards Awadhi cuisine and favours the pulao over the biryani. The Kapurthala royals have been known for gourmandise and Francophilia, and these come together in their European menu, most clearly in their consommé.
Heritage structures in Shimla are also repositories for other kinds of recipes—such as the ones involved in mixing mortar. Dhruv Chandra Sud, a Shimla-based architect, says the colonial residences here derive their style from European references. “You could bring in an architect,” he explains, “but you still had to build with Indian workmen.” The result was local construction techniques applied to designs from elsewhere.
The design for Sunnymead Estate—built by civil servant Jawahar Kishan Kitchlu in the 1890s—came from a book by R.A. ‘Bungalow’ Briggs. The construction (as with Chapslee) used dhajji walls—timber frames filled with stone and mud mortar, and known to be earthquake resistant. When Madhavi Bhatia, great-grand-niece of Kitchlu, took over Sunnymead—where she now runs a bed and breakfast—she had trouble finding masons who still made dhajji walls. She found an elderly man with failing eyesight in Hamirpur who agreed to renovate the house. As a result, she says, “Every single door and window in the house is crooked.”
But to all appearances the house seems perfect, set amidst a riotous flower garden and filled with books, carpets and objets d’art that imbue it with warmth and character. Then, there are the stories: a faded rug turns out to be an Agra jail carpet that must be a couple of centuries old; a mirror turns into the story of a family member who one day, a century or so ago, disappeared, and turned up after eight years with tonnes of Chinese artifacts.
It is a comfortable house of curiosities that tempts one to stay in (despite a copy of Shimla on Foot in every room). There doesn’t seem to be much that is beyond cook Madhu’s formidable abilities, and the Indian dishes are prepared with a Kashmiri Pandit sensibility. Speaking of heritage, there’s a rose plant in the garden that is as old as the house.